You take a sip of new blend coffee and then feel a rush of cool air and a movement catches the corner of your eye. As if from nowhere there is now an impeccably dressed stranger sitting in the chair opposite. Surprised, you bet; you didn’t hear anyone knock and just as you are about to say something he begins in a calm and measured voice.

‘The deal is this’

‘In every city of the world I am going to display your product on billboards at the busiest junctions.’

‘I will be able to tell you how many people see the advertisement, their gender, age group and nationality.’

‘I will tell you what they think of your product and in many cases I will give you their contact details. While they are reading the billboard I will make it possible for them to view your website and, if they feel the urge, make a purchase.’

‘I can have all this setup in two days and it will cost you less than a small advertisement displayed in your favourite trade journal.’

He stops talking for just a second. ‘Interested?’

Okay you might be forgiven thinking that such an offer was too good to be true, you might think that you are going to wake up from a dream or maybe it really is time to get a lock on that office door.

But let us just take time to reflect. If you are still reading this well I am that man who has come from nowhere and offered you a deal.

The advertising site is on the Internet and the billboard I’m offering is the humble online survey.

Stop for one moment and start to associate an online survey not with ‘market research’ but with ‘marketing’. And not any type of marketing this is ‘Marketing’ with a very large capital ‘M’ and in flashing neon lights. Marketing that is effective, low cost, quick, and direct.

You can advertise a published online survey on a website, or via email and like a billboard by the side of a transport hub, your message will appear in front of people. Unlike billboards where it has to be estimated as to the number of people actually see an advert, the online survey records the number of times a survey is started.

By asking demographic questions such as age, gender and nationality you can collate important information that will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your promotion and ensure that you are interacting with your target market on a one-on-one level.

Unlike billboards where the message is often subliminal, or maybe just trying to achieve brand awareness, with online surveys you have the opportunity to connect with the public to find out what they really think about your product, how it relates to them, how it is perceived.

Using an online survey website it takes only minutes and hours to create a survey and using the power of the Internet an online survey can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis.

Even if you offer a prize as an incentive for people to complete the survey or use Pay Per Click advertising to capture a wider, or more focused audience you will still have low cost but effective marketing.

‘Tell me then. Is it a deal?’

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? What age group does your product or service appeal to? Do you know who your potential customers are and where they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Do you represent value for money? How do your services and products compare to those of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver directly to your customer?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your employees properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which marketing channels are effective and which ones are ineffective?

Do the right people understand your marketing message? Does your marketing properly embody your brand? Do you use the right promotion channels? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By consulting with the customer you not only show them that you care you also take the guesswork out of customer services.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If a new service is planned and you want to know the attitudes people have then market research can help, not only by evaluating the potential for the new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be fine tuned.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – By establishing a benchmark you then have a useful reference to allow you to measure your progress – If you do not measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Preliminary research may be able to identify problems in the service you intend to offer or in your product, regular market research will show if progress is being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Considering the benefits that market research will bring to any organization it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

For a small outlay online surveys can be set up to provide the promoter with feedback and the opportunity to maintain an on going relationship with their audience. Using online Survey Software a promoter can now quickly and easily create an online survey.

With an online survey a promoter can find out exactly:-

• who attended;
• what persuaded them;
• what they thought of the event;
• would they expect to attend again;
• would they recommend future events to their friends.

One way to ensure a good response is to have a supply of business sized cards that are marked clearly with a slogan like “Feedback”, “Everyone’s a critic”, “What do you think”. On each card a web address will point either directly to the survey or to a website where a link to the survey can be placed. Cards can be issued at the door with the tickets, or handed out among the crowd and if they are made the size of business cards they will be small enough to be slipped into a pocket, purse or wallet. Small incentives such as a chance to win a free guest pass for a future event, a signed CD or T shirt would help towards improving the response rate.

Using the results from online surveys the promoter is able to:

• Obtain a profile of the audience
• Gauge the overall success of the event;
• Measure the effectiveness of different promotion;
• Receive feedback on the venue and facilities;
• Receive feedback on the act;
• Promote on a one on one basis;
• Build a targeted database for future events;
• Build a loyal audience;
• Link to merchandise and other promotions.

It takes considering effort to promote an event and only a little extra effort to use online surveys to encourage further contact and reap a number of short and long term benefits that contact will bring.

The following example shows the feedback that could be used for a breaking band. It not only gathers valuable feedback, but continues to promote the band, their CD and gives the opportunity to encourage further contact.

Sample Feedback Survey

To view the summary results of the survey: Sample Survey Results

However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that can be collected what will always be missing is information that will tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they dislike the site? Was the layout easy to understand or just plain confusing? Was it easy to navigate the website and were they able to find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are some people that visit the website not buying anything? Was it because they didn’t like what was being offered or they couldn’t find what they wanted?

Using online surveys webmasters have a simple and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors means that there is no longer the need to guess, just ask the visitors how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they find the website?
• Is their interest in the website for reasons of business or pleasure?
• Was the information they were looking for found on the website?
• How easy did they find navigating the website?
• Would they be willing to recommend the website to others?

A good website survey will be concise and will collate information that once analyzed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

An alternative to a traditional survey would be to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. One example would be to ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; another example would be after ordering an item the customer could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To make sure that the questions do not become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

For a small outlay online surveys can be set up to provide the promoter with feedback and the opportunity to maintain an on going relationship with their audience. Using online Survey Software a promoter can now quickly and easily create an online survey.

With an online survey a promoter can find out exactly:-

• who attended;
• what persuaded them;
• what they thought of the event;
• would they expect to attend again;
• would they recommend future events to their friends.

A way to ensure a good response is to have a number of business sized cards that are marked clearly with words like “Feedback”, “Your opinion counts”, “Tell us what you thought”. On each card a web address will point either directly to the survey or to a website where a link to the survey can be placed. The cards can be issued at the door with the tickets, or handed out among the audience and being the size of business cards they are small enough to be stuck in a pocket, purse or wallet. Small incentives such as a chance to win a free guest pass for a future event, a signed CD or T shirt would help towards improving the response rate.

Using the results from online surveys the promoter is able to:

• Obtain a profile of the audience
• Gauge the overall success of the event;
• Measure the effectiveness of different promotion;
• Receive feedback on the venue and facilities;
• Receive feedback on the act;
• Promote on a one on one basis;
• Build a targeted database for future events;
• Build a loyal audience;
• Link to merchandise and other promotions.

Considering the effort that it takes to promote an event and the little extra effort required in using online surveys to encourage further contact and all the immediate and long term benefits that will bring – it really couldn’t be any easier.

The following sample survey shows the feedback that could be used for a breaking band. It not only gathers valuable feedback, but continues to promote the band, their CD and gives the opportunity to encourage further contact.

Sample Feedback Survey

To view the summary results of the survey: Sample Survey Results

The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With every satisfied customer your business is likely to go on and secure many more customers through recommendations and if you do not take proper care of your customers there is probably a competitor waiting in the wings that will.

A Customer Satisfaction survey will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Having completed the survey consider how you will analyze the answers.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where a respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are much easier to analyze than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to properly analyze the data allowing you to make informed decisions.

Then, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to avoid the temptation, in any way, of attempting to sugar coat the survey.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to identify any problem areas so that they can be fixed; conducting regular customer satisfaction will help prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where you may be losing business to your competitors initiatives.

What questions should you ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Do you make it easy for the customer to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly.

If there are reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Physical store or online website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide do fully match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your customers equate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the type of business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid delays?

A good business will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

Understanding your customers more will allow you to properly target your business.

Allow customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details so that any problems might be later addressed and their concerns followed up.

What is next?

Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the customer service is found wanting.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they made a positive contribution to the business and improved the customer service?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Don’t lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor – Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are concerned about customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the Sample Customer Survey

1. It’s cheap, it’s cheerful
Select the right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and the cost to publish excellent value for money.
Useful information derived from surveys can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.

2. It’s extremely easy
Anyone can create and publish an online survey. Using an online survey website only basic browser skills is required to create professional looking surveys that when published ate simple to comcomplete.

3. Invite the world
Once the survey is online it is a simple step to promote it the most popular methods being either through email (with a link enclosed) or via a link from a website. Anyone who has the URL can be connected instantly to the survey, at a time that’s convenient to them, 24×7.

4. We have all got an opinion – and we like to give it
The majority of customers do not view surveys as spam and will in fact welcome the opportunity to voice their opinion and have the chance to make an impact on a brand. They provide a good method for broaching sensitive subjects with concerned employees; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows the key issues to be raised in a positive manner and encourages employee participation. Deliver a message to individuals and then have the feedback collated in a manageable form.

5. Get inside your respondent’s head
With traditional advertising you can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can’t make them think. Surveys actively engage the respondent, who think about the question before giving their response.

6. Building relationships
It needn’t all end at the end of the survey – while you have the respondent’s attention and they are in the mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter – making the most of the window of opportunity where you have their interest.

7. Link your survey to other online information
Take the opportunity to maximise the interest of those responding to your survey by referencing related information. By including links within the survey to websites that offer detailed information you are able to maximise your marketing effort and reinforce the marketing message.

8. Subtly does it
In the mind of the respondent a surveys can help associate a product with a number of positive attributes. By listing the many features of a product and then asking the respondent to say how important the features are to them, regardless of their response, the respondent will associate the product with the features.

9. Not just selling
A survey is an effective, quick and easy method to help promote and gain acceptance for a difficult proposal; such as a public body trying to gain acceptance and support for a particular scheme.
Take the example of a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. With a survey you have the opportunity to explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better frame of mind to appreciate an argument and be more positive in their response. As well as promoting the cause, useful feedback is gained that can be used to fine tune the overall marketing strategy.

10. Engage your target group
Thinking laterally a lively and imaginative approach to surveys can provide the ‘hook’ to engage respondents. The survey subject can be focused towards a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. The survey’s marketing message can take the form of a simple brand awareness message by stating that ‘the survey is being sponsored by brand name’, or by finding a link from the subject matter to the product – something that is surprisingly easy to do and that is highly effective.

Attract traffic by providing a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing surveys. Having a public survey notice board as part of a website is a cost effective and automated method that will help increase traffic and establish a loyal and returning following. Unlike discussion boards there is no opportunity for people to disrupt the site by inappropriate remarks as the survey results are displayed in summary form enabling them to dispense with moderators and maintenance.

Customers do not associate surveys as spam and most welcome the opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand.

Many of the techniques and a few more are contained in the following Sample Marketing Survey.

Before an advertiser spends those millions of dollars promoting a product, he wants to have some idea of the odds of his product being successful in the marketplace. Online surveys are one way to determine that. And more advertisers every day are taking advantage of this relatively low cost of doing market research that can prevent them making huge marketing and production mistakes.

The greatest benefit of online surveys is that they give corporations instantaneous feedback on their ideas, products, and services. They can find out, in short order, how much demand there is for their idea or product among their potential customers. In addition, paid survey sites help companies to fine tune their offer as many times as necessary to get their product or service to the point where it will either be accepted by the marketplace or dropped. And, usually surveys let them do this at a fraction of the cost it would have taken to produce the product and market it.

Online surveys have one other advantage. It lets companies build up an email list of potential customers who have expressed an interest in what they have to offer.

From the user’s standpoint, paid online surveys give them a chance to make a little money. If they are also interested in the product that they are evaluating, as they should be, it let’s them keep up on the latest innovations on that product. For example, if you are a Linux guru and love working with it, you might be the perfect candidate for a company about to promote a new Linux software add on. And it’s even sweeter for you, if the company is willing to pay you for your opinions.

The typical marketing survey form will ask a potential buyer a series of questions such as: What do they like about the product? What do they dislike? If they like it the survey will likely as if they would be willing to pay for such a product and if so, how much. If they dislike the product, a good survey will dig deeper to get answers as to what specifically they do not like. If enough people express similar reservations about the product, this gives the company a chance to modify the product before it goes to market.

As a buyer, you may also be asked about your buying patterns. For example, how often do you buy a new car, upgrade your software, or buy pasta? This helps the company gauge the size of their potential market. A company may have a product that they believe only appeals to men. If their survey reveals that it has an equal appeal to women as well, they have potentially doubled their market size. And, of course, it works in reverse as well. They may think they have a product that both men and women will enjoy, and sadly find that only men are interested in it.

With paid online surveys, both the company and the user win.  If you’re a user, the key thing is to get on the right notification lists so you’ll be aware of the online surveys that are available.